I heard about this game by accident during the hype leading up to RDR2's release. It stuck out to me because it was an open world game where you got to play on the Indian's side during Manifest Destiny. Unfortunately, this is also an early access survival game, so it's got that working against it. Luckily the dev team seems to be actively working on this game, so my review may be out of date in a year.

The first thing I'll give this game praise for is the graphics. It is a beautiful game to look at. The forests and plains are gorgeous to explore and the NPCs are definitely better looking than I'd expect from early access. The day night cycle really helps pretty up the world too. The game really sold me as I rode through the woods on a moonlit night, shadows casting down from the trees. I did wish their were some bigger Indian villages, not just a copy and paste of 3 tepees with one campfire. Unfortunately, I don't think this game is well optimized either, because there is a long load time to start up the world and sometimes there's some lag, but they seem to be getting that fixed.

One thing the game didn't start with, but has finally been added in, is music. Originally, the game was silent besides sparse ambient noise. I created a YouTube playlist of American Indian style music. Luckily, the game now has a similar soundtrack.

The premise of this game, as stated earlier, is you are an Indian pushing back the wave of white settlers. You are the chief of a small, unnamed tribe and you must rally the other tribes in the area to increase your chance at resisting, so you get to be Tecumseh. I kinda wished they'd've pulled from some actual history to really help flesh out the story. The land you are fighting to reclaim is just "generic Western" state and I didn't recognize any of the Indian tribe names. That doesn't mean they weren't real tribes, but none I was familiar with. I would've dug this game so much more if I was working with Sitting Bull and the Lakota or Geronimo and his Apache. And when the American Army comes in it's led by the likes of Crook or Custer. Instead, we get silent Indians & settlers who were voice acted by I'm guessing the developers in the office, who are some kind of European, because they all have thick accents. I say they all, I think it was 3 people who did all the voice work. They've been working on getting more actors though, and I do think I heard a few new voices after this latest update.

At the very least, I would enjoy a bit more of a narrative. As of now, you just have a map divided into regions that you have to take and then hold against the white man. You do that by talking to the village in the area and completing a mission for them, like take out a logger's camp or farm. A new thing added in recent updates, as you get more villages under your banner, you can assemble their warriors as a war party that will follow you. Unfortunately, AI is not really up to snuff yet, so I usually leave them behind. There's also an overworld management aspect. You can set your villages to collect different resources or craft certain items. There's a lot to do, but not much motivation to do it. Even something like the Mafia 3 model, where most the game is just taking territories with a few story missions sprinkled throughout would've been a viable option.

This is a survival game though, and most the gameplay stems from that. When you die, you lose a good portion, if not all, of your inventory and start back with just a flimsy bow. So, on top of stopping the white man, you have to scrounge up everything you can to build better weapons, healing, and utility items. With these last few updates I think they've balanced it out a bit better so that you can focus more on claiming territories than grinding for materials. The UI trying to manage all these things can be a bit clunky though.

As for what you'll be doing in the moment, you ride around on your horse until you come across a white settlement, and then sneak in to either kill or scare them off. The stealth mechanics are a work in progress. You have a detection meter and there is some basic hiding in bushes type of stealth. A basic cover system would be great, and there's some issues when cabins are involved. The enemy AI has been tweaked to make the game more fun and fair to play. You have to plan your raids though. Maybe during the day the settlers are all up and aware moving about the camp. but go to bed in distant tents at night, or maybe the camp is near deserted during the day as everyone is off working. When you do get found out the combat is manageable, but not comfortable, if that makes sense. It's better to be stealthy and non-violent anyways. If you kill every white settler, they start ramping up their aggressiveness earlier.

All in all, I know I sort of poo-pooed on this game a bit, and I hate to do that to an independent game, but I think they should've waited a bit longer before releasing it, even in early access. That all being said there is the start of what could be a great AA game here as long as the developer keeps putting the time into it. But right now, I can only recommend this to someone who's interested in the concept of playing as an Indian chief pushing back against Westward expansion.